David Copperfield' is a popular novel of Charles Dickens.Uriah Heep is an important figure in the novel. He is the villain of the novel. He was a very shrewd and ambitious man. He had no moral character.
Uriah Heep is one of the novel' primary antagonists, becoming the main villain shortly after David escapes from Mr. Murdstone' control. He is initially introduced as an apprentice at Mr. Wickfield' legal practice, but he eventually becomes Mr. Wickfield' partner. It turns out, however, that Uriah has secured his position through a variety of underhanded and ** means: in addition to encouraging Mr. Wickfield' drinking habit, he exploited his employer' resulting confusion by forging his signature on multiple questionable business dealings, and then threatening to expose Mr. Wickfield' supposed **. Throughout this **, Uriah has also been attempting to force Mr. Wickfield' daughter, Agnes, to marry him as a way of cementing his power in the household. Uriah comes from a working-class background that he has not been able to fully cast * even in his position at Mr. Wickfield' legal practice. For instance, he retains the speech patterns of a lower-class person (dropping the initial H in words). To complicate matters further, the constraints of the Victorian class system mean that Uriah can only express his hopes for advancement in a backhanded way by insisting that he is too "umble" to have any ambitions at all. As a result, Uriah intensely resents anyone who occupies a more respected or privileged position in society—particularly David, perhaps because the two men are otherwise so similar. In fact, Dickens implies that Uriah wishes to marry Agnes at least in part because he senses that David is in love with her, and hopes to cause his rival pain. As the novel ends, Uriah is in prison, claiming to have been reformed. His protestations ring hollow, however, because they refer to the same "humbleness" that Uriah has used throughout the novel as a way of advancing socially.
